Characters. — Head (including eyes) a little narrower than base of mesonotum, about as long as breadth between eyes, front globose and prominent, shorter than vertex; pronotum about as long as mesonotum, its lateral margins a little convex, angularly incised before ‘posterior angles which are ampliated; abdomen somewhat cylindrical, longer than space between apex of head and base of cruciform elevation; tympanal coverings small and lateral; anterior femora robustly spined beneath; tegmina talc-like, semi-opaque, the apical half with the venation reticulate and forming a mass of small cellular areas, sometimes the ulnar areas are crossed by transverse veins, basal cell about twice as long- as broad; wings with the posterior margin deeply sinuate near the abdominal area; apical areas six, sometimes broken up by transverse veins into a more numerous and reticulate series.

References:

The illustration and description comes from the journal Genera Insectorum, and a specific article from 1914 by W. L. Distant titled Homoptera. Fam. Cicadidae, Subfam, Gaeaninae. Read it on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website.

March 21, 2015

The NCSU Libraries Rare and Unique Digital Collections website recently reminded the us of artist Eugene Alain (E.A.) Seguy’s insect illustrations. Seguy created these illustrations in the 1920’s, and as you might imagine, some of the cicada names cited in the notes for these illustrations have changed. Names typically change when cicadas are reclassified due to discoveries about their biology, or when we realize that someone else had actually named them earlier than the namer currently given credit.

Here are the two illustrations, the accompanying identification, and corrected identifications.